Color Out of Space (2020) RLJE Films/Horror-Sci-Fi RT: 111 minutes No MPAA rating (violence, gore, language, some innuendo, alcohol use, drug references) Director: Richard Stanley Screenplay: Richard Stanley and Scarlett Amaris Music: Colin Stetson Cinematography: Steve Annis Release date: January 24, 2020 (US) Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight, Tommy Chong, Q’orianka Kilcher, Josh C. Waller. Box Office: $765,561 (US)/$1M (World)
Rating: *** ½
When I sat down to watch Color Out of Space, I knew it was an adaptation of the short story “The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft. It didn’t hit me until about 20-30 minutes in that it had been done before. Aficionados of cheesy 80s horror movies will surely remember 1987’s The Curse starring Wil Wheaton, Claude Akins and John Schneider. That too was an adaptation of Lovecraft’s story. I can’t believe it took me that long to make the connection. I should have realized it from the get-go. This is what happens when you see as many movies as Movie Guy.
The casting of Nicolas Cage in the lead role was a brilliant move on the part of director Richard Stanley (Hardware). Nobody does crazy like Cage. Even his sane characters are usually somewhat off. Nathan, the patriarch of the family at the center of Color Out of Space, is already slightly unhinged when we first meet him. How else would you describe a man who uproots his family and moves to the country to raise alpacas? ANYWAY, as the events of Color Out of Space unfold, Cage gets nuttier and nuttier until finally going full Nicolas Cage. This is the Cage we love to see. It’s one of the many perverse pleasures of Color Out of Space, a horror-sci-fi piece as completely bonkers as its star.
Tired of life in the big city, Nathan Gardener and his family move into a remote house in the woods in rural Massachusetts. Not all of them are loving it. His wife Theresa (Richardson, Event Horizon), a cancer survivor and on-line financial advisor, is losing clients because she can’t get a decent internet signal. Teenage daughter Lavinia (Arthur, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before) practices Wicca. Eldest son Benny (Meyer, The Guest) is smoking pot and hanging out with Ezra (Tommy Chong), the oddball hermit squatting on their property. Youngest child Jack (Hilliard, The Haunting of Hill House) is a bit withdrawn but otherwise okay. That is, until THAT night.
I’m referring to the night a glowing meteorite crash-lands in their front yard. It’s surrounded by an unearthly shade of purple and an odor that rivals the Bog of Eternal Stench (from Labyrinth). It eventually crumbles and sets off a chain of events that would drive anybody crazy. All of it seems to center on the well. Strange flowers grow around it. What looks like a mutated purple firefly comes out. A purple glow emanates from it. A hydrologist (Knight, TV’s Once Upon a Time) surveying the water table determines that the water has become contaminated with some unknown substance. Jack insists that he has a new “friend” that lives in the well. Nathan’s tomatoes grow at a quick rate but turn out to be rotten inside. Everybody’s sanity disintegrates. Then things get really bad.
Of the final act of Color Out of Space, I’ll only say that icky body horror is part of it. Some people are turned off by this kind of thing; to them I say, STAY AWAY! You are clearly NOT the intended audience. Me, I love a good, gory, whacked-out thrill ride of a scary movie. Although it has campy elements, I can’t exactly call it camp. It’s too artfully made to be thrown into the same category as Evil Dead II or Bubba Ho-Tep. Cage’s screwy performance elevates it to the highest form of midnight movie entertainment. His descent into madness is unlike any other actor working today. What comes natural to Cage would be considered wild overacting if anyone other than Cage tried it. He gets off a lot of great lines but my favorite has to be “Now if you don’t mind, it’s time we milk the alpacas!” It’s all in Cage’s inimitable dialogue delivery system. Nobody delivers dialogue like Cage especially when he’s in full Nicolas Cage mode as he is here. He is truly the star of this show.
Color Out of Space marks a comeback for Richard Stanley who hasn’t made a film in nearly three decades. The last one of his I saw was 1990’s Hardware, another strange one. He took a long break from the business after he was fired from 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau and replaced by John Frankenheimer a few days into production. He’s back now in a BIG way! It looks like the studio gave him free rein to do whatever he wanted with Color Out of Space. I haven’t seen anything this balls out, bat-crap crazy since Mandy, another wild flick featuring Cage in full nutjob mode. Bringing Cage, Stanley and Lovecraft together is a true movie buff’s dream come true.
Let’s not give the rest of the cast the short shrift. They’re all great too. Richardson, currently on screens in the horrific The Turning, does good work as the wife worried her husband no longer finds her attractive after her mastectomy. She has this one great scene where she cuts off her own fingers while chopping carrots and doesn’t even realize it. It’s freaky as hell! Arthur is convincing as a teen girl venting her annoyance at having her life uprooted by dabbling in black magic with her paperback copy of The Necronomicon always close at hand. Chong has some wonky moments as an old stoner who knows more of what’s going on than anyone else.
The only thing I would do differently is lose the plot element involving the local mayor (Kilcher, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) who wants to downplay the meteorite incident since it might scare off developers looking to build a dam. Stanley devotes only one scene to this before its dropped and never brought up again. Aside from that minor glitch, Color Out of Space is FREAKING AWESOME! It’s the kind of movie I would have watched after smoking pot in my college days. It is the very definition of “out there”. It has amazing visuals and a fair amount of gore and gross stuff. It also has Nicolas Cage and alpacas. What more could you possibly want?
